Bestial behaviour

[Re: “God’s rules,” Letters, July 10] While I agree with Ed Binder that “scapegoating religion as justification for bestial human behaviour is a futile exercise and delusion,” I wonder what can justify the inhuman poverty prevailing in the Third World countries and the massacres going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the name of fighting insurgency and international terrorism?

Should we consider them the result of international capitalism, corporate greed or simply exploitation of the weak by the strong? Can somebody explain, please?

>> Jalaluddin S. Hussain

Avid atheism

[Re: “Resurrecting God,” Letters, June 26] In response to Paul Kokoski’s letter, I must say he writes as if he himself has an intimate relationship with the almighty. It’s all totally fictional, of course. The truth of any argument on religion, and God especially, is that no one knows for sure if a deity exists or doesn’t.

Oh, but you can say that the Bible says he does, or the Koran claims so. Well, me being a 21st century man and a logical human being, I would like to bring to the readers’ attention that the Bible was written more than three centuries after the death of Christ. So how in Christ’s name would anyone know what was truly said by JC?

It’s true that religion has been with mankind since our most primitive origins. The Greeks and Egyptians had a god for all earthly bodies and believed in an afterlife. Like many people today. Did believing in Zeus make him real? No. So what is the same now as 3,000 years ago? Us.

Religion, afterlife, heaven, they are all used to make our inevitable death more palatable to accept, perhaps a prerequisite for our species’s intelligence. The idea that there is an almighty God overlooking all our actions, deciding whether we are worthy to move onto heaven when our planet-born lives are finished; or if we’re bad, and don’t abide by the church’s moral code, we’ll go to hell.

It pains me just to write such words for how far-fetched they seem, yet countless millions have been raised to believe them. And that is the key to people. Raised. If religion and belief is taught and instilled in the brains of our young children, it is then carried into adulthood and thus another believer joins the ranks and another generation is set to inherit the religion. There is no end in sight.

I, as an avid atheist, have no qualms as to what people choose to believe. That is their freedom and I don’t judge that belief, though I see a problem with religion that reflects directly on the lives of everyone on this earth. That is if one doesn’t believe that they control their own fate and destiny, then how are we to save this planet for our children, when all is supposedly prearranged by God?

The fact of the matter is, believe and pray as you must—it won’t make a lick of difference—but know that it’s you who controls your fate and destiny, and only you can find happiness in this life. God isn’t going to help, I assure you.

As modern human beings, we need just one moral code, one of simplicity: don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you. Live by this and God assures me you’ll have a place in his entourage.

>>Cory Keleher

The crusading church

[Re: “Resurrecting God,” Letters, June 26] Mr. Kokoski claims that the church does not “condone crusades or inquisitions.” Perhaps not, but the church was officially dismissive of other religions and encouraged and participated in these historic events (in the case of the Inquisition, through one of its then most pious countries, Spain). The church even granted pardon for their sins to the rabble who took part in the fourth (and most unpleasant) Crusade.

And though the church may not be totalitarian, Catholic countries usually did, until recently, have a lot of censorship. In the Quebec of the 1950s, films showing an unmarried man and woman kissing were cut for provincial distribution. Perhaps this was one reason why the church lost influence here: it felt it could decide for others what was good for them.

People eventually felt they could make that choice for themselves, at least in private. This has something to do with free will.

>> David Mills

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